Some Things I Remember...

...and Some Things I Do Not. It was a tough couple of days.

Thursday: The work week began with a Thursday morning gig. If you're a normal person, being at work at 9 AM isn't that horrible, but for me, that was pretty rough; with traffic, it took me an hour to get there.

The gig was some sort of 80s party, and we played two sets between 12:15 and 2:45. Afterwards, we loaded the gear back into the trailer and went our separate ways. I sat in traffic for an hour. I got home, sat down at my computer, and woke up in the dark. I remember pretty much nothing else about the gig.

Ganesh subbing on drums 

Friday: In spite of the winter weather closing in on Atlanta, we headed to the airport for our flight to the west coast.

It was the first time I've ever seen de-icing in Atlanta. It makes you wonder how much practice the dude with the hose gets at this. First they spray the orange stuff, and then they spray the fluorescent green stuff. Did Nickelodeon choose the colors?

Our gig was a corporate Christmas party in San Francisco, and the location was a very cool venue called Bimbo's 365, a place with a very hip, Rat Pack sort of vibe. You could easily picture Dean Martin coming around the corner here.

In between soundcheck and dinner, I went for a run along the bay.

The gig was pretty good, I thought. I liked the backline gear that I ended up with, things sounded good in my ears, and there was an excellent dancer in a red dress that kept us awake (the gig was between midnight and 2:30 AM, Eastern Time). I even had a good sax solo on the outro to Africa, something we don't do very often these days.

We took three taxis to the hotel by the airport. After a quick shower, I crashed. This photo was taken at 12:32 AM, and I was asleep seconds later.

Saturday: My alarm went off at 4:05 AM, and Greg and I were in the lobby ten minutes later. By 4:45, we were in the San Francisco airport for our flight back to Atlanta.

I crawled into the plane, got in my seat, and passed out, waking up only when the pilot announced that we were on our initial approach into Atlanta (around thirty minutes out).

Back in Georgia, we dispersed to get our cars and then headed to Venkman's for not one, but TWO sold out holiday shows--an unplugged set and a regular electric set. I felt surprisingly good for both--I guess that was just enough sleep to carry me through, though I did start to get kind of brain dead in the middle of the second set. Both performances were solid/low anxiety.

7 PM show:




10 PM show:




And we're not done yet! See you at the airport this week!

Louisiana

Of all the "touring" that Yacht Rock has done in the past few years, we had yet to make a pass through the New Orleans area--we'd come as close as Biloxi on a random gig a few years ago, but a string of a shows had yet to line up. I was therefore pretty excited when these dates were added to our calendar--New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and a wedding to cover the bill!

Thursday: The flight to New Orleans wasn't too early. Once we arrived, there was ample time to park the van at the House of Blues and walk around the French Quarter.

The veggie po' boy that I had for lunch was not good--basically a fistful of olives, lettuce, and shredded cheddar cheese, which I drowned in hot sauce.

This is the smallest House of Blues--the capacity is somewhere around 840--that we've played. I think we had around a quarter of that for an audience, thanks to some generous ticket give-aways. A pretty good first effort, I guess.

We played pretty well--there was a little bit of rust from not thinking about this stuff for a week, but we had a good time and got through it without any disasters...except for my delay setting on the Maneater solo! Whoops! "Somebody messed with my presets," as we would say. Normally, the answers in the sax solo are generated by my effects pedal, set to whole notes and a single feedback. Post-solo analysis revealed that it was set to whole note triplets (how is that even possible?), so the delay was an extra second and a half late. Whatever. It was painful. Technology bites me in the ass again.

Friday: Pictures from my morning run.

abandoned naval complex

I was really excited to run across Doreen, whom I'd only come across on the internet. Equally exciting in person! She can really play!

Our gig for the evening was at The Varsity Theatre in Baton Rouge, a gig I thought would be a random one time gig, kind of like the place we played in Raleigh, North Carolina once or twice, never to return.

Instead, we were surprised to find a good sounding room with an enthusiastic crowd, and the band responded with a great show! I'm sure we'll be back here the next time we make this trip.

Saturday: A couple of pictures from my morning run. I tried to make it all the way down St. Charles  to the Audubon Zoo, but I ran out of time.

Our final gig on this run was a very late wedding in New Orleans, so several of us killed time at the National World War II Museum, which was spectacular. I spent most of the day there.

48 star flag

Around 5 PM, I made the walk across town to the Roosevelt Hotel where we were playing.

The Roosevelt Hotel has amazing Christmas decorations, and it seems like half of Louisiana was in there trying to get the perfect photo for their holiday cards. It's really something to see. I'm probably in the background of a few pictures, asleep in a chair.

Here's a Southern Living video showing the process:




So...the gig! The thing that was mostly paying for this entire trip! We played two sets beginning at 10:15 PM. Ouch. I was really tired from the day's activities and spent the whole night watching the clock.

The bride and groom ended the night with a Second Line parade--the hippest, most New Orleans way to say good night.

The holiday gigs overall better than the previous few years. We've got a couple of corporate things later in the week, and then holiday shows at Venkman's on Saturday night. Stay tuned!

Turkey Eve 2017

Turkey Eve 2017 was two sets at Venkman's: an unplugged set at 7 PM and then a regular performance at 10 PM.

7 PM: A pretty easy set. Two factors were in play here: 1. Nick was sick with a cold, so we avoided a few songs that were too difficult or would have shredded his voice for the later set; 2. the "unplugged" nature of the show allows us to take a few more liberties, so things like the EWI solo in Hey Nineteen could be fudged to make it fit on a saxophone. No gear problems for me in this one.

Check it out:



10: PM: Again, nothing scary or unusual about this one, and no gear problems either. We had a drinking crowd this evening, which bumped up the energy in the room quite a bit. The regular set ended with a really exemplary drum solo by Mark Cobb on Lido Shuffle.


We've got two gigs in Louisiana this week:

Thursday night, we're at the House of Blues in New Orleans
Friday night, we're at The Varsity in Baton Rouge

Two in South Carolina

Here's a bit of an oddity from last week's calendar: Yacht Rock had a gig in South Carolina on Thursday, drove home on Friday, drove back to South Carolina for a gig on Saturday, and came home again on Sunday. Lots of time snoozing and looking at my phone in the van over those four days.

Thursday: Gig #1 was some sort of multi day food festival in Palmetto Bluff--I never did quite catch on to exactly what was going on, probably because I was asleep in the back seat of the van for most of the ride.

typical backstage sign

this cool truck became a doughnut display in the evening, with treats on every peg on the sign in the back

singers!

At the center of this small festival was a three level treehouse. Super cool.

our tiny stage

This gig was pretty great, except...that it was 50 degrees outside! That's really not a great temperature for playing wind instruments (especially when they sit for half a gig before I pick one up). My hands got pretty cold, too. It was rough. We finished at 10 PM, so thankfully it wasn't a very late night.

I thought I'd fixed my laptop, but the same creeping mouse pointer things occurred. Just like last time, the sounds were unaffected, but it appears that my computer has a ghost in the machine.

I spent most of the break at the fire pit, trying to keep warm

the overhead trees at load out

 Saturday: Gig #2--point the van towards Newberry, South Carolina!

drive fast, Zach!

This show was our triumphant return to the Newberry Opera House, which I believe is their fully restored community arts center. The room sounds great (it's really dead and really dark in the audience, so much so that it feels like a television studio), and the hospitality is handled by a couple of old ladies who prepare a Thanksgiving feast for the band (they even made me a special vegetarian meal of black beans and rice).

I read online that the cause of my crazy laptop problems might be because of a bad power supply. I think that's completely plausible; plugging my phone into the charger brick that came with my iPad causes the touch screen to behave erratically, and I had some popping sounds earlier in the year from my EWI rig that would go away when I unplugged it from the power supply. To test this theory, I used my power supply from my fly-date gear. Surprise! The laptop was stable for the entire gig.

Unfortunately, this happened to be the night that the batteries in the EWI itself died, and it was just my luck that it happened right at the solo in Africa, hanging a MIDI note and then going completely dead. Damnit! I played EWI on three songs the entire night--why did it have to happen right there?

After we finished the song, the band allowed me another crack at the solo, and OF COURSE the damn thing worked that time. I went ahead and swapped out the batteries after that.

A word to the wise: even though the EWI has a little light that signals when battery power is low, it will start acting weird before the light comes on. When it behaves erratically, try changing the batteries.

Later in the evening, I hopefully redeemed myself with one of my better solos on Taking It to the Streets. Maybe the audience will remember that more than the failure of my equipment.

Lastly, Greg's magic fan died, probably of heartache after he cut his long locks off several weeks ago.

Turkey Eve shows are Wednesday, November 22, 7 PM (unplugged) and 10 PM (regular) at Venkman's!